Building Popular Legitimacy with Reconciliatory Gestures and Participation: A Community-Level Model of Authority

Abstract

The research tests a model of reconciliation between authorities and communities. It expands past models of legitimacy to an intergroup dynamic model by identifying two community-level actions that legal authorities can undertake to build their popular legitimacy and promote cooperation. One type of action is a community-level reconciliatory gesture: an initiative that authorities make to communities to build trust by recognizing and trying to move beyond prior negative experiences. A second involves community-level opportunities for participating in decisions about how to manage social order. The results of this study with residents from a large metropolitan city suggest that both types of community-level gestures can make distinct contributions to building trust in and cooperation with the police.